Interrelationship between Chest CT Severity Scores and the Clinical Parameters of Adult Patients with COVID-19 Pneumonia

Abstract

The present study correlates the CT severity score with the clinical severity of the patients who were confirmed to have COVID-19 disease using the 25-point visual quantitative assessment. Several studies have reported the CT findings of COVID-19 pneumonia. However, the outcome of patients has not been definite in many of these series. Therefore, the estimation of risk factors for severe disease and death in these earlier studies are not very strong, and there are limited data available about the prognostic application of chest CT. Data of consecutive symptomatic patients who were suspected to have COVID-19 infection and presented to our hospital were collected from March to April 2020. All patients underwent two consecutive RT-PCR tests and had a noncontrast HRCT scan done at presentation. From the original cohort of 1062 patients, 160 patients were excluded leaving a total number of 902 patients. The mean age was 44.2\(\pm\)11.9 years (85.3% males, 14.7% females). CT severity score was found to be positively correlated with lymphopenia, increased serum CRP, d-dimer, and ferritin levels. The oxygen requirements and length of hospital stay were increasing with the increase in scan severity. The 25-point CT severity score correlates well with the COVID-19 clinical severity. Our data suggest that chest CT scoring system can aid in predicting COVID-19 disease outcome and significantly correlates with lab tests and oxygen requirements. In patients with COVID-19 infection, CT severity score is favorably connected with inflammatory lab markers, length of hospital stay, and oxygen need. More study, including association with patient outcome, is needed to better elucidate the utility of chest CT for prognosis in COVID-19 disease.